My wife and I have been married for four years and during that time
I designed and built a custom Harley Davidson frame off for a good friend of
mine. About the second year into our marriage while we were talking about
building motorcycles, she told me she had a motorcycle when she was living
in Bangkok, Thailand, and at the time of 1969 she was 19 years old. At first
she could not remember the name of the bike only the letters BS. So I
thought at first a BSA. I asked her to describe the bike the best she could
and she told me it was all black and chrome and used two stroke oil so that
ruled out the BSA somewhat as the bike she had was brand new in 1969 and
most bikes in Bangkok were under 500cc. It drove me crazy for about a week
trying to figure out what bike she had. I was surfing the internet one day
for vintage 2 stroke motorcycles and read an old article about the
Bridgestone Tire Company producing motorcycles from 50-350cc. I pulled up
some photos of restored BS bikes and called her into the room and when she
saw the photo she said that's it! that's it!. It was a 1969 Mach II SS, her
daily driver 40 years ago. I asked her what happened to the bike and she
told me one day she was taking off going to the local markets and hit a
sandy patch and the bike spun the back wheel pitching her sideways and she
rotated the throttle wide open launching the bike across the road and
crashed on its side flipping her off with little damage to her or the
bike. She kept the bike until 1973 giving it to friends when she moved to
the United States. She remembers the Mach II as being extremely fast and has
always loved and respected it.